3 definitions
by
4Gatos

The "capture" of popular and reputedly progressive comedy shows by various industries which wield influence over stakeholders within particular corporate parent companies and networks, which in turn borrow from certain comedians' or comic writers' reputations as independent-minded social critics, cashing in this artistic credence to advance the interests of industries or political lobbies which these artists and performers might otherwise be expected to satirize and expose.

The term comicapture is related to "regulatory capture", an expression originated by Woodrow Wilson to signify the phenomenon of state regulatory agencies which were created to act in the public interest but which instead advance the commercial or special interests that dominate the industries the agencies are charged with regulating.

Did you see Comedy Show X last week? It's sad when comedy commits suicide and comes back from the dead as a zombie infomercial. The show is totally comicaptured and I'm wiping it off TiVo before it eats my brain.

A public relations strategy to suppress public perception of a statistical increase in human or ecological collateral or other types of negative consequence or ramification resulting from a range of profitable industrial exploits or products, or consequences/ramifications stemming from institutional mishandling or government malfeasance, by "spinning" the numbers or adulterating the information in such a way that any negative consequence- or the association to a particular branch of government, public figure, industry or institution to the negative disclosure- are vastly minimized. This type of data and information manipulation is commonly either sourced from government agencies with a stake in suppressing alarming disclosures and statistics, or from investigations funded directly or indirectly by the industries or institutions in question, and then typically publicized without scrutiny by media resources which depend on particular industries for ad revenues and/or with a marked tendency toward institutional or political bias.

"The news network has been prone to spinimizing the extent of NSA data collection."

"The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported that prescription drug overdose deaths among women increased roughly 400 percent between 1999 to 2010. For males in the same age range, the increase was roughly 250 percent, although male overdose rates remain higher than female. In response to questions over the specific nature of these deaths, the CDC pointedly refused to identify the majority of fatalities as intentional suicides, attempting to spinimize the growing association between prescription drugs, radical personality changes, violence and suicide."

"During the White House press conference, the Secretary of Defense spinimized the number of violent civilian deaths in armed conflict even as reports in the archive of Wikileaks offered a startling contradiction to official tallies."

A type of damage control in industry public relations or political lobbying, whereby the public is "inoculated" against the inevitable release of information which is potentially threatening to an industry's product or reputation, or to a political representative, movement or media figure. The critical information may be preemptively recast (spun) as something positive; and/or a source of the threatening information may be subjected to negative allegations to reduce source credibility and confound public perceptions of damaging disclosures.

In the wake of class action injury suits, drug company X was driven to a spinoculation campaign as it faced the release of its own internal research data demonstrating that its blockbuster drug Y induced a pathological proliferation of neurons known to precede mass brain cell death, increasing the likelihood of eventual dementia in a large percentage of patients. In cooperation with company public relations executives, company X quickly funded a series of spinoculating studies to invert public scrutiny, claiming that drug Y produced "neurogenerative" effects, replicating the production of healthy brain cells, inferring that, rather than causing brain damage, drug Y "makes people smarter".

When drug company X was alerted that a medical expert would soon make media appearances questioning the safety of drug Y, the company quickly planted stories in the press alleging misconduct on the part of the critic in order to spinoculate the public against inevitable alarm over drug risks.